CHAPTER 2 — “Dead Soil”
I spend the first hour of my new life lying in the dirt, staring at a ceiling that’s mostly holes, trying to remember how to breathe.
It’s harder than it sounds. This body doesn’t work right. The lungs are too small, or maybe I’m just not used to needing them again. Every inhale feels like I’m learning the concept for the first time, like some part of me forgot that air is a thing living people require.
Living.
I’m living.
The ceiling has water stains shaped like a map of somewhere I don’t recognize.
There’s a bird nest in the corner where the thatch has rotted through, and I can hear something scurrying in the walls—mice, probably, or rats, or some horrible hybrid that this timeline invented while I was dead.
Two hundred years is a long time. A lot can change.
Maybe rats got bigger. Maybe they got smarter.
Maybe they formed a civilization and I’m lying in their sacred temple.
Wouldn’t that be perfect? Survive betrayal, survive death, survive two centuries of oblivion, only to get murdered by religious rodents.
The System pings.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│ HELPFUL REMINDER │├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤│ You've been horizontal for 67 minutes.
││ ││ Recommended actions: ││ ? Stand up ││ ? Eat something ││ ? Process your trauma in a healthy way ││ ││ "Just a suggestion.
No pressure. Take your ││ time. It's not like you have anywhere to be.
" │└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The System’s gotten sassier since I died. That’s new. Version 1.0 was all clinical detachment and sterile notifications. This version has opinions. I’m not sure if I hate it or appreciate the company.
I sit up.
The world tilts sideways for a moment, then grudgingly stabilizes.
My body—no, this body, the one I’m borrowing from a dead man named Edrin Thatch—protests every movement like I’m asking it to do something unreasonable.
Which, fair. Yesterday it was a corpse. Today I’m making it function. We’re both having a rough time.
I look around the cottage.
“Cottage” is generous. It’s one room, maybe fifteen feet across, with a dirt floor that’s more mud than dirt and walls that are more gaps than walls.
There’s a bed I apparently fell out of (straw mattress, suspicious stains, something definitely living in it), a fireplace that hasn’t seen fire in months, and a table with one chair that’s missing a leg.
Home sweet home.
On the table, there’s a letter. Yellowed paper, curling at the edges, weighed down by a rock. I pick it up, squinting at handwriting that’s almost illegible.
To whoever finds this—
My name is Edrin Thatch. I was a healer. Not a good one. Level 4 after six years of trying. The System says I have low mana affinity, which is a polite way of saying I’m useless.
I came to this farm because I thought I could make something grow. The soil is strange here—too much mana, the crops come up wrong. But I kept trying. That’s what my mother taught me. Keep trying.
I don’t have much time left. I can feel it. The mana sickness, they call it. When you don’t have enough capacity to filter what the land puts out. Ironic, isn’t it? Too much magic in the dirt, not enough in my bones.
If you’re reading this, I’m probably dead. The farm is yours if you want it. The deed is in the box under the bed. I don’t have anyone to leave it to.
Please take care of the tomatoes. I almost got them to grow right.
— Edrin
I set the letter down.
Poor bastard. Died alone on a mana-poisoned farm, trying to grow tomatoes that would never come up right, and his last wish was for some stranger to finish the job.
There’s something deeply sad about that.
Also something deeply me—drawn to lost causes, to broken things, to situations that are absolutely going to make my life harder.
“Thanks for the body, Edrin,” I mutter. “I’ll… try not to waste it.”
No response. Obviously. He’s dead. I’m wearing him like a suit.
God, that’s a weird thought. I’m going to stop thinking that thought now.
I find the deed box under the bed, next to a collection of dust bunnies that have achieved sentience.
The deed itself is official enough—stamped by something called the “Provincial Land Registry,” which didn’t exist when I was alive.
There’s a map attached, showing twelve acres of farmland on the outskirts of a village called Millbrook.
Millbrook.
Never heard of it. Which makes sense, because two hundred years ago this was probably forest, or maybe someone else’s farm, or maybe nothing at all. Geography changes. Borders shift. Empires rise and fall.
My empire rose and fell. The one I helped build. The one that was supposed to mean something.
I push that thought away before it can grow teeth.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│ PROPERTY SCAN ││ \[Thatch Farmstead\] │├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤│ Previous Owner: Edrin Thatch (deceased) ││ Current Owner: Velthar (by inheritance) ││ ││ Land: 12 acres ││ --- Corrupted: 9 acres (mana toxicity: HIGH) ││ --- Salvageable: 3 acres (mana toxicity: LOW) ││ ││ Structures: ││ --- Cottage (Poor condition) ││ --- Barn (Collapsed) ││ --- Well (Dry) ││ --- Shed (Missing?
??) ││ ││ UNUSUAL FEATURE DETECTED: ││ --- Dungeon entrance located beneath property ││ --- Status: Sealed (weakening) ││ --- Threat Level: Unknown ││ --- Estimated Floors: 10+ ││ ││ "You own a dungeon.
Congratulations. This is ││ either very good or very bad.
Probably bad." │└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
I read that box three times.
A dungeon. There’s a dungeon under my farm.
That explains the mana toxicity. Dungeons leak ambient magic like infected wounds leak pus—slowly, constantly, poisoning everything around them. An unsealed dungeon would’ve made this land uninhabitable years ago. But a sealed dungeon, with the seal weakening…
That’s a time bomb.
And I’m standing on top of it.
I should leave. Any sane person would leave. Find a city somewhere, blend in, grind levels in a controlled environment with proper safety protocols and maybe a retirement plan. That’s the smart play. That’s what someone who valued their continued existence would do.
But something’s nagging at me. Something about that scan.
Dungeon entrance located beneath property.
I step outside, squinting against sunlight that feels too bright after two centuries of nothing.
The farm spreads out before me in all its decrepit glory—overgrown fields, grey soil, a collapsed barn that looks like a giant stepped on it.
The vegetable garden Edrin mentioned is a sad little grid of dead plants and dying hope.
But I’m not looking at any of that. I’m looking for the dungeon entrance.
I find it behind the cottage, half-hidden by overgrown weeds and a suspicious pile of rocks that someone stacked there deliberately. There’s a trapdoor, old wood reinforced with iron bands, covered in symbols that make my heart stop.
I know those symbols.
I designed those symbols.
This is my dungeon.
I stand there for a long time, staring at my own handwriting carved into two-hundred-year-old metal. The sealing array is elegant—multiple redundant locks, mana-reactive triggers, self-sustaining power draw from the dungeon’s ambient field. It’s good work. Past me was thorough.
Past me was also apparently paranoid as hell, because there’s a failsafe I don’t remember adding. A mana signature lock. The seal will recognize specific magical signatures and respond accordingly—reject intruders, accept authorized users.
I press my palm against the metal.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│ DUNGEON SCAN ││ \[Unnamed Sealed Dungeon\] │├─────────────────────────────────────────────────┤│ Structure: 10 Floors (estimated) ││ ││ Current Status: ││ --- Floors 1-3: OPEN (seal degraded) ││ --- Floors 4-10: LOCKED (mana signature req.) ││ ││ MANA SIGNATURE SCAN...
││ ││ Signature detected: MATCH ││ Authorization level: ARCHITECT ││ ││ Welcome back.
││ ││ "Well. This explains some things." │└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Welcome back.
The dungeon recognizes me. The dungeon I apparently built, centuries ago, for reasons I can’t remember. It’s been sitting here this whole time, sealed against everyone except me, waiting.
The deep floors are locked to everyone but me. That’s why nobody’s cleared this place in two hundred years. They literally can’t get past Floor 3. The seal won’t let them.
I don’t know whether to laugh or scream.
Past me built an insurance policy. A fallback. A place where my enemies couldn’t follow and my allies—
No. I didn’t have allies. I had people I trusted who turned out to be neither.
I pull my hand away from the seal. The metal hums, warm against my skin, like it’s glad to see me. Like it’s been lonely.
I know the feeling.
“I’ll be back,” I tell it. “Need to figure some things out first.”
The dungeon doesn’t respond. Obviously. It’s a dungeon. But I swear the humming gets a little louder, a little more insistent, like a dog that’s been waiting by the door for its owner to come home.
Two hundred years. It’s been waiting for two hundred years.
I turn away before I can start feeling sorry for a hole in the ground. I’ve got enough problems without adding “emotional attachment to architecture” to the list.
The village is a forty-minute walk from the farm, down a dirt road that’s more pothole than path.
My new body protests every step—the legs are shorter than I’m used to, the center of gravity is wrong, and there’s a persistent ache in my lower back that suggests Edrin spent a lot of time hunching over sick people.
Healer’s posture. I remember it from Persephone.
Don’t think about Persephone.